Computers
in Coma Take Over SchoolAI Controlled by Hidden
Supercomputer

Here we are, on the doorstep to the 21st century.According to official figures, our school is perfectly up to date with
its technological equipment.Indeed,
since last year, little cute computers have spawned themselves on almost every
teacher’s desk in every classroom, and the authorities insist that every
classroom will have Internet access – if not tomorrow, then at least by the
end of the week.But is the
situation truly as peachy as we are wanted to believe, or were the myriads of
gray steel boxes and monitors implanted throughout the school just to pull the
wool of false prosperity over our eyes?

There are three basic categories of computers at our school.The first, and quite possibly most numerous, is the invalid class.In most severe cases, these are the computers that, when turned on,
start screeching bloodcurdlingly, equivalent to somebody undergoing medieval
torture, and then colorfully crash without ever getting anything remotely
coherent on their gaping monitors.More
often, though, the invalids are capable of disguising themselves as normal PCs
– until you start working on them, that is; at that point, if their
processor speed of two keyboard presses per minute hasn’t discouraged your
attempts, you will discover with horror that there are fatal errors that will,
without warning, swallow that thesis paper you’ve been working on for the
last half an hour, infect your floppy disk, refuse to save, or send baffling
error messages to the printer that only serve to waste the remainder of the
period.The invalids are
scattered throughout the building, but their biggest quorum can be located at
the Journalism lab, where, for a long time, the corpses of invalids who were
“put to sleep” over the summer remained in a heap in the corner of the
room as a morbid monument for posterity.

The second class of computers is the jailbirds, which can be found primarily
at the library.They are properly
functioning PCs (purchased just over the summer, in fact), with plenty of
memory, good speed, and dozens of applications, and they are perfect if you
wish to look something up in an encyclopedia or type a page or two in
Microsoft Word.That’s where
the user-friendly interface ends, however.You see, while we students are taught that we are important and will
one day rule the world, the rational-thinking adults out there still consider
us to be dangerous, infectious vermin with an insatiable appetite for
destruction and vandalism.As
such, they must protect the valuable computers from our hacker paws by
creating (behind the misleadingly innocent interface) a security system that
puts Alkatraz at shame.As soon
as a curious student attempts to summon a function that is beyond the narrow
parameters allowed by the district, alarms go off (why do you think we have
fire drills so often and at such inopportune times?), and the unsuspecting
high schooler is swiftly neutralized and taken away by the special forces
disciplinary unit.

If you were told that the school building contains a supercomputer that has a
Pentium 3 processor, a 20-inch monitor, more gigabytes in its hard drive than
all the other PCs in the building put together, stereo speakers, and a
built-in DVD player, you would either dismiss it as a preposterous rumor or
start doubting this world’s sanity.Yet
it is true that this monster exists, and it is the brain behind all
machinations that go on in the building.Where is it located?Amazingly
enough (and the conspiracy theorists will love this), it is hidden in the
cafeteria, behind the food lines and burger grills.Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?Cafeteria food is the ideal dispenser of indoctrination vaccines; the
food’s taste effectively masks the massive portions of condensed conformity
gas that is injected into cheeseburgers and tater tots.Only those of us who have managed to avoid cafeteria lunches for
several years in a row can begin to see the truth more clearly.

We’re ensnared into believing that our school district is putting utmost
care into providing its students with the top notch, brand new technological
equipment.Yet let’s face it
– while everyday users are beginning to upgrade to Windows 2000, the school
is still laden with Windows 95, and there still exist systems with Windows 3.1
on them (oh, the horror!); the beige little terminals with text-only
interfaces, while still in existence, are individual teachers’ choices and
thus exceptions to criticism.A
good portion of the computers we have right now were either picked up at the
Lafayette College’s garbage dump or, even simpler, moved from one classroom
to another – and the novelty disguised the fact that the computers are still
trash.